Media Gallery

Birth RightTo be read from right to left, after Marwa Helal

؟memory of figment a merely not are you know you do How

monthly escape linings my
paradise of ink the is blood this
penumbra of cadence the
residue a leave unbloomed the even
inheritance of figment a is violence
refused the and refusal of inheritance
screaming alive out came I
pleases he as leaves and enters God
stories ghost dispute not do I
you tell only will I
screaming alive out came I
story the into written not is body my
means this commencement of
enter to yet have I
return before space lent the
ر before space the
*prayer mourning a in
exist you know you do how mother my ask I
daughter the am I says she
and Aminah of daughter Latifah of
fugitives harbor wombs these
want still I recover to want still I
blue the like rotation crescent in
precursor a not is return dancer
evidence to
say Aviv Tel of resorts the
“birthright your is it home come”
beginning 1 as only Home use I
exploration theoretical a of
inquiry cartographic a
dust of fragrance the into
grocery the from carnations red steal I
pollination no is there violence without
return only can I crime of product the
settler is name my favor the
score a improvising *here
outside fall notes
space of

//

* إِنَّا للهِ وَإِنَّـا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعون
*هنا ; بين الماضي والحاضر

The Arabic is a poetic form invented by Marwa Helal, first featured in Winter Tangerine in November 2016, “that includes an Arabic letter with an Arabic footnote, and an Arabic numeral, preferably written right to left as the Arabic language is, and vehemently rejects you if you try to read it left to right.”

Exorcism

I can no longer pretend the flowers are enough,
flowers in ink, flowers on plates, flowers in my shoe
laces, candied flowers, 1-800 FLOWERS, balloon,
birthday, funeral flowers, marshmallow flowers staining
the milk pink. Flowers in my mother’s hijab frame the smile
lines grown deeper; the long term health effects of appearing
gentle in a hostile setting. Have you read the instructions on tigers?
They may attack the unfamiliar. Remain calm, move slowly,
adapt as the tremor of leaves. To survive is to convince
the predator you are not really there.
I can no longer pretend slowly alive, kneeling in the soil
is enough. A nation of neon plastic straws, machines
on the surface of Mars, reminds its citizens to be patient.
Slowly, when the bill passes, slowly through diversity
training, slowly through handshake and t-shirt and apology
and apology and apology and apology and apology. I take a knife
to the dam, bathing in the leaks. There are teeth
in my laughter. Imagine a life of tectonic distortion: gaping, wet,
magma, colliding with, really there.
I scream my name in the pool, it is almost enough to hear the terror
I can be. Remember when discovering fire,
the heat of progress pairs a leather palm with new
ways to eat and be eaten.

Leave

A hijacked plane in 1969 lands in Damascus. This means a plane was unable to fly
away, to Tel Aviv. I read about the incident in the autobiography of Leila Khaled.
This book is out of print. This means it is difficult to find her first hand account in text
though much is written about her. I wanted to write a poem about Leila: a hero,
or terrorist, depending on who you ask. Dareen is the name of a woman,
who lives under house arrest. This means she is unable to leave her home.
Israeli officials categorize her as a threat, she calls herself a poet.
The speaker is an important part of a poem. A rule of poetry, try
not to let the reader out of a poem. At this point I will disobey and say
you are free to go if you choose. Choice is a complicated part of describing
Palestinian heroes or terrorists. The Israeli and Palestinian conflict is studied
in class. The word conflict in English, defined as “a serious disagreement”.
If you are still here, doesn’t that sound fair? Two sides, equally at fault,
each making a choice. Three generations later, I still do not know
how to explain choices. A place was left behind. A place I have never seen.
This means I still do not know how to write myself
into existence. Three boys form a tributary of blood, on a beach in Gaza, elsewhere
a contained border, a family of bones, without broth; these will be described as incidents.
The difference between violence and incidents in a conflict,
depends on the speaker. What word would you choose to begin?
Nakba translates as “Catastrophe”. Ha’atzmaut, “Independence”.
Though Hebrew and Arabic share yawm or yohm,
for day. Alan Dershowitz and other Israeli historians argue
it was a choice of Palestinians to leave the land in 1948.
Argue, a word used when choosing an explanation about why things are.
History is a collection of choices. I have also inherited memories.
Pink prayer beads on the counter. Creases in white fabric, black threads
embroidering live skin. Memories do not always obey
the lines of history’s choices. My grandfather fled the land
when he was eight years old, leaving his mother at home.
This means he never saw her again. Many will continue to argue
leaving and never returning is a choice, not a violence.
A poem, depending on the speaker, an act of incitement
to violence. Concrete left in the throats of children, a mother’s final glance,
a segregated beach, a segregated sun; it is all just
a great misunderstanding, a conflict. I have changed my mind.
I am leaving
you and this poem behind. A choice, I choose, this time.

Day

the archipelagos sinking
season while placenta
welcome to here
Nakba
or miracles
Kiraman Katibin
twelve scratches
degrees to go
is our world gone?
skirts of la tierra
gun resin on my lashes
Aries grows so fast
stars shrivel under puberty
morning to pray
our dead are

in circumference first
and blood memory
what is now
Independence
start on a fresh page
right shoulder
on the walls of solitary
full circle or minutes
a bay of wolves
I want to be a boy, again
Atlas weeping
dregs in the cup call me
is our world gone?
Fajr, paint the skulls sugar

clementine of the growing
ripen the break
a return and a funeral
a pending list of sins
lift your pencils to the steam
left shoulder
three hundred and sixty
til the last meal passes
landing on the out
I want blooms in my hands
over sidereal film
barren, again
wake, a conjugation of mourn
the lights are on
dancing

Zaina Alsous is an abolitionist daughter of the Palestinian diaspora currently writing and conspiring in North Carolina. Her work has appeared in The Offing, Abolition Journal, decomP, Glass, Foundry, and elsewhere.

Events

Four Sessions, 3 hours each (6-9pm)
Tuesdays, August 8, August 15, August 22, and August 29
Fees & Payment Options:
$220 General / $200 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!)
Full payment due before first class. Maximum of ten students.
Why you should take this class: Writer & Director Darine Hotait bridges the gap between literature and cinema due to her genuine fascination and devotion to both. A mentor in numerous screenwriting workshops at film festivals and institutions such as the Med Film Festival in Rome, Arab Film Festival in Rotterdam, Mizna Literary Gathering in Minneapolis, among others —Darine invites you to learn how to take the elements that construct a screenplay into development: act structure, character development, and scene breakdown.
Class Description: Develop your screenwriting skills with award-winning writer and director Darine Hotait, whose films screened at top international film festivals, received multiple Best Fiction awards and were acquired by Sundance TV, AMC Networks & BBC Channel. Her feature screenplays were selected at Cannes Film Festival's International Scriptwriters' Pavilion and were among the top 5 finalists at Hearst Screenwriting Competition. She's the recipient of the AFAC cinema grant and a current literary fellow at New York Foundation for the Arts.
Over the period of 4 weeks, writers will be guided through the process of developing a feature film screenplay using various hands-on exercises. Participants are expected to have a one-page storyline that they wish to develop into a feature film screenplay during the workshop. REGISTER HERE
Questions? Contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org
Darine Hotait is the writer and director of various short films Beirut Hide and Seek (2011), and I Say Dust(2015), which screened at over 70 international film festivals and received multiple Best Short Fiction awards. Her films received prestigious distribution and were acquired by reputable platforms such as AMC Network, Sundance Channel, BBC Channel, Shorts International & The Journal of Short Films. Her debut science fiction feature film project Symphony of a Flood was selected at the International Screenwriters' Pavilion at Cannes Film Festival 2016 and was a finalist at the prestigious Hearst Screenwriting Competition at San Francisco Film Society.
Her plays and short stories have been published in numerous publications in print and online. Darine has mentored over 50 screenwriting workshops around the world at various institutions and international film festivals. Since 2010, Darine serves as the founder and creative director of Cinephilia Productions in New York City, an incubator for the development of writers and filmmakers from the MENA region.
Praise for I Say Dust (2015)“The film’s power and beauty comes in its subtlety. The story’s intensity and potency lies in Darine’s ability to sing cinematic brilliance in the interstices between scenes and to reveal more about the characters in their silence. The plot is unsaturated and always in dialogue with the audience: what is strategically unpictured by Darine is viscerally felt by the viewer.”
— Leena Habiballah, Qahwa Project, US“The characters are complex, the writing – interspersed with poetry – is so touching, and the shots so poignant it just seems like a damn shame it’s a short rather than a feature length film.”
— Wided Khadraoui, Kalimat Magazine“There is romance, sweet and ephemeral - an encounter more potent, perhaps, for the sense of coming home. A thoughtful film which packs a lot of ideas into a tight space, I Say Dust speaks well to the talents of those involved. It’s no surprise that it has multiple awards to its name.”
— Jennie Kermode, Eye For Film (Edinburgh)..

Four Sessions, 2 hours each (7-9pm)
Wednesdays August 9th, August 16th, August 23rd, August 30th
Fees & Payment Options:
$200 General / $180 AAWW Members (JOIN THE FAN CLUB!)
Full payment due before first class. Maximum of fifteen students.
Why you should take this class: Poet Sally Wen Mao, award-winning author of Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014), has been anthologized in The Best American Poetry 2013, BOMB Magazine, Poetry, and more. You can explore Lavender Town in The Margins and check out the feature in Bustle listing her as one of the best poetry debuts in the last five years. Sally Wen Mao invites you to re-invent language and to re-invent the familiar in this protest poetry workshop.
Class Description: We are living in a senseless political era. How do we react, as writers, artists, and citizens? Where do we channel our anger, our protest, our ideals – how do we do right by our art and our politics? In this workshop, participants consider the political poem and examine the ways to approach resistance through language, lyric, and form—in poetry or in lyric essays. Drawing from contemporary poets like Layli Long Soldier, Tommy Pico, Timothy Yu, Srikanth Reddy, Solmaz Sharif, and Claudia Rankine, we will examine over the course of several sessions the tools we can use to dismantle the powerful narratives that silence and oppress – and in that process, discover our own political voice. This course will include writing exercises and generative sessions as well as a workshop.
REGISTER HERE
Questions? Contact Tiffany Le at tle@aaww.org
Sally Wen Mao is the author of OCULUS (Graywolf Press 2019) and Mad Honey Symposium (Alice James Books, 2014). She is the recipient of awards and fellowships from Poets & Writers, The Cullman Center at the New York Public Library, Kundiman, Jerome Foundation, and Bread Loaf Writers Conference, among others. Her poems have received a Pushcart Prize and published in Tin House, Poetry, Best American Poetry 2013, and A Public Space, among others.
​”​Linguistically dexterous and formally astute, Mao’s tight and textured debut ​[Mad Honey Symposium] ​conjures an absurd, lush, occasionally poisonous world and the ravenous humans and animals that travel through it. . . . With echoes of Glück and Plath, Mao generates stunning landscapes where the flora and fauna reflect her presence and strength of voice.​”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“In Mad Honey Symposium, Sally Wen Mao offers delicious diction: ‘archipelago . . . arpeggios;’ ‘horntails / swarm the wax leaves;’ ‘Fetal and feral, we curl;’ ‘mouth on your pendulum;’ ‘in the rigmarole of lucky living—!’ She also offers a heightened attention to how words work and work out in various contexts. The poet takes us all over the place in time and geography—from her mother’s bed to Audubon’s dreams to sputnik to hive and back again—all in the service of feeling deeply. A lovely debut collection.”
—Kimiko Hahn..

'I glanced curiously at the stranger. He looked old and frail. The sky outside the window seemed darker with his figure in profile. Though he was sitting next to us, he appeared to be somewhere else entirely.'